


What's Up, Doc?

by lesbiankavinsky



Series: What's Up, Doc? [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Getting Together, Nonbinary Doctor (Doctor Who), Other, a lot going on here i realize, and i havent thought about much else since, basically i was like what if ten was a nonbinary grad student who went by doc, some light pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 14:01:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20408941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbiankavinsky/pseuds/lesbiankavinsky
Summary: Doc met Rose in their second week of graduate school, struck up a conversation with her while she made their latte, and within approximately three minutes had found her to be more curious, more thoughtful, and generally brighter than most of their classmates. Within a week they’d given her an index card with their login information to give her access to the university’s databases and online courses. Within a month, it became their habit to spend Sunday afternoons together on the quad and Sunday evenings in the library, with Doc up to their eyeballs in readings on theoretical physics and Rose flipping in a leisurely manner between a novel and the Cambridge Companion to said novel. Now, a year later, they’re something close to married. Doc turns up a precise two minutes after the end of Rose’s shift on their improbable Vespa, and off they go to whatever corner of the city they haven’t yet explored or, if it’s a time of acute academic stress, to the library which, Doc insists, was the most reliable source of adventure in any case.





	What's Up, Doc?

As Ph.D. candidates go, Doc doesn’t have that bad of a caffeine addiction. The fact that they never forego their morning drink (large matcha green tea latte with whole milk) has more to do with the staff of the Tardy Scholar, the aptly if somewhat tackily named campus coffeeshop, than anything else. Every day except Saturdays and Wednesdays, Rose Tyler works the opening shift, and can be relied upon to greet them with a wide smile -- her real smile, not her customer service one -- and a “What’s up, Doc?”

Doc met Rose in their second week of graduate school, struck up a conversation with her while she made their latte, and within approximately three minutes had found her to be more curious, more thoughtful, and generally brighter than most of their classmates. Within a week they’d given her an index card with their login information to give her access to the university’s databases and online courses. Within a month, it became their habit to spend Sunday afternoons together on the quad and Sunday evenings in the library, with Doc up to their eyeballs in readings on theoretical physics and Rose flipping in a leisurely manner between a novel and the Cambridge Companion to said novel. Now, a year later, they’re something close to married. Doc turns up a precise two minutes after the end of Rose’s shift on their improbable Vespa, and off they go to whatever corner of the city they haven’t yet explored or, if it’s a time of acute academic stress, to the library which, Doc insists, was the most reliable source of adventure in any case. 

Today, however, they’re not going to the library. Doc had squirreled themself away in their room for the better part of the past 48 hours and had produced a draft of a chapter, which meant that as far as they’re concerned, today is a holiday. This is how they generally work: feverish bouts of research and writing followed by days of shirking all responsibilities. Worth every minute chained to their desk, they think, as Rose comes out of the coffeeshop, bag over her shoulder, swinging her helmet from her hand. It had been their birthday present to her this year, to replace the old bicycle helmet she uses to wear to ride with them. More her style, with its bubblegum pink sheen, and safer, too. Putting the helmet on, she swings easily onto the back of the scooter and puts her arms around them. “Where to, Doc?”

“Your pick,” they say, starting the scooter up and driving toward the main entrance of the campus. “I didn’t have anything in mind.” They have to make an effort, even now, even after a year, not to feel too much when Rose is this close to them, not to get overwhelmed by the feeling of being held by her. It still makes them a little dizzy. 

“Can we just go to yours?” Rose says, her voice close to their ear, a little louder than ordinary to be heard over the noise of the Vespa. “Had a rotten shift, all I want to do is sit and have a drink.”

“Your wish is my command,” Doc says, and turns left. A year, they think. A year, and they’re still foolishly, miraculously, mercifully not over it.

Doc lives in a distressingly ugly cement block of an apartment building that houses graduate students and their families. It’s relatively cheap and located close to campus without actually being mixed in with the undergraduate dorms, so it does well enough. There’s even room to park the Vespa outside. As Doc fiddles with the keys outside the front door, Rose reaches over and into their shirt -- the top four buttons are, admittedly, undone -- to snap the green lace strap of their bralette. 

“Cute.” 

Doc thinks they should get some sort of prize for not dropping their keys. “Thanks,” they say, hoping their voice doesn’t come out too obviously high-pitched. “It’s new.”

“I know,” Rose says. 

Doc pulls the door open, holding it for Rose and wondering when this became their life. The elevator in the building is dangerously unreliable so they take the stairs up to Doc’s cluttered little apartment on the third floor. It’s a good thing Rose is over as regularly as she is. The place will never be properly tidy but Doc is certain that the piles of dishes in the sink and the catastrophe of papers in the living room would grow out of control if they didn’t have -- well, not someone to  _ impress _ , exactly, but someone they’d rather not have thinking of them as a complete slob. Appearing as an absent-minded professor type was okay, was inevitable, but they couldn’t stand the idea of Rose seeing them as they sometimes saw themself: as a half-grown child, someone thrust into adulthood and unable to look after themself. And so they tidy in little fifteen minute bursts, keeping the chaos at bay, occasionally scrubbing down the shower stall when they feel really ambitious. Whenever they finish one of their marathon writing sessions, they spend an hour cleaning, so they apartment is quite respectable today. 

Inside, Rose flops down on the couch, putting her feet up on the arm rest and Doc goes into the kitchen to make her a drink. It’s essentially a studio, so they can see her from where they stand at the counter with two glasses, sorting through the bottles of booze. Cosmopolitan for her, screwdriver for them.

“I hate students,” Rose says. “No offense.”

“None taken. Fuck the lot of them.”

“I would never. Can you imagine sleeping with someone that full of themselves?”

Doc grins. “Who would be worst, do you think? What department?”

“Oh god, that’s difficult. Well, an English student would try to mansplain Jane Austen to me as foreplay. That’d be pretty bleak. Theology would have an existential crisis in the middle and you’d have to pat their back while they talk about sexual ethics. Also bleak. Not to shit on your people but I imagine STEM would be pretty bad, too.”

“Oh, unquestionably,” Doc says, walking over to the couch and handing Rose her drink. “However, if you can get a woman studying pure math to speak like even a sentence to you, you should absolutely do your best to marry her.”

Rose shuffles herself into a sitting position and Doc plops down on the floor. “They’re just so rude,” she says, taking a sip of her drink and tilting her head back against the back of the couch. 

Doc watches the curve of her throat for a moment and then looks determinedly into their drink. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

“Still.”

“I just don’t know where they get off being so high and mighty. I mean, really, just because they’re in school and I’m working, they think they’re so much better than me. Not just smarter, but  _ better _ . They don’t even realize it shows, but it does.”

“You know you’re worth a hundred of them, right?”   


Rose nods. “For one thing, I’d never tip with pennies.”   


“No,” Doc says, grinning over the rim of their glass. “You wouldn’t. Pennies? Really?”   


“Three different people! Just a handful of pennies. I’d rather get nothing.”

“I really do mean it,” Doc says, wishing they’d had enough to drink that they could blame the vodka for the rush of emotion they’re feeling. But it’s just something that happens to them. They look at Rose, and they get hit by a metaphorical 18-wheeler of love. They’re a shambles at this point. “I go to lectures and seminars and everything with these people and we swap research and writing and -- you know, I’ve got a few friends, it’s not like I hate absolutely everyone but. You’re the -- you’re the best person on that entire campus. My absolute favorite.” 

She smiles, leans down to tuck a stray bit of their hair behind their ear. They’ve been growing it out and right now it’s at the stage where they can tuck most of it back into a little ponytail, but there are bits of it that always end up hanging around their face. Rose’s hand lingers a moment longer than it should be their ear and they want to turn their head, press a kiss to her palm. 

She pulls away, sits back on the couch. “You’re my favorite, too.”

Doc glows. 

“I hope I won’t be there forever,” she says, tone shifting. “I don’t need anything too fancy, but I’d like, I don’t know, something where people actually treat me decently.”

Doc pushes down the guilty panic they feel whenever Rose talks about leaving the coffee shop. They know she hates the job and they want her to be happy, but they don’t want her to leave. Sure, they can’t imagine they’d stop being friends if she stopped working on campus, but they like the daily certainty of seeing her when they get their morning tea, the routine of riding two minutes from one of the science buildings on the far end of campus to pick her up at the end of her shift. They take another drink. “You’ll get there,” they say, hoping they sound genuinely encouraging. 

“I’d like to be somewhere where I can get enough time off to really travel. See the world, you know.”

Doc nods, feeling a sharp hurt that they know they shouldn’t feel at the idea of her exploring without them. They don’t know why they can’t manage just to focus on her and what she wants, what she  _ deserves.  _ Why they always end up making it about them, if only in their own head.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Paris. We could go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower if you can get over your thing about heights.”

Doc blinks up at her. “We?”

“I mean, yeah,” she says. She shifts, curling her legs under herself, something anxious about the movement. “If you want to, that is. You wouldn’t have to, I just thought --” 

“Of course I’d want to go,” Doc says. “I didn’t know if you’d --”

“Of course I’d want you to come with.” For a moment they sit in silence, not quite looking at one another. Then Rose says, voice softer than before, more fragile, “Can we at least talk about it?”   


Doc looks up sharply. “What do you mean?”   


Rose lets out a breath, looking at the ceiling. Then she look at Doc, and they realize there are tears in her eyes. They start to panic, trying to work out what they did to make her cry. 

“I mean,” Rose says, voice just a bit shaky, “can we talk about us? I get it if you don’t want anything to happen, for -- for whatever reason, but can we at least talk about it so it’s not just this bomb we’re sitting on all the time?” Doc just stares. After a moment, Rose goes on, her voice steadier. “Anytime we get close to it, it’s like you just sort of. Scamper away from the subject like a scared rabbit.”

Doc is still trying to work out what the subject is. Surely not what they want it to be. All they can think to say is, “I’m not running away right now.”   


“Okay,” Rose says. “So.”

“So?”   


Rose looks exasperated and Doc wants to melt into the floor but they force themself to set their drink down on the coffee table and fold their hands in their lap, as if to say,  _ I’m here.  _ As if to say again,  _ I’m not running away. _

Rose sets her glass down next to theirs and scoots off the couch to sit on the ground next to Doc. She takes a breath that sounds like the sort of breath you take after you’ve been crying very hard for a long while, but her voice remains steady. “I’m just tired of dancing around this. Around us. I know how I look at you, and -- Doc, I know how you look at me. We flirt and I touch you more than I need to and you touch me more than you need to and I’m not stupid.”

Doc’s heart is pounding and they’re very, very glad they put their drink down because they’re pretty sure their hands would be shaking like anything if they had to hold onto a glass. 

Rose goes on. “I know your life is busy and so is mine, and I know -- well, I’m guessing here, but I’d think this stuff is sort of scary for you because of gender stuff and brain stuff and that’s okay. You’re allowed to be scared. But I want you to know that I’m not scared. Not even a bit.”

They sit for a moment, Doc wishing just this once that they could hold eye contact with her. 

“Okay,” Rose says. “Can you say something?”

Doc takes a deep breath, and then another. “I know you just did a lot of talking and it was all very good but can you -- can you say what you mean? Please?”

Rose rolls her eyes, but she smiles, too. “I -- god, there’s no graceful way to say this, is there? There are so many words for this and they’re all kind of shit.”

“Rose.”

She focuses back on them. “I really want to kiss you. And I have for a while, and I think you have for a while, too. And we can talk about what that means and that should maybe come before the kissing but it’s sort of hard to focus when you’re this close and -- hey, you’re smiling, that’s good.”

It’s true -- Doc is grinning, wide and uncontrollable, a sunburst in their chest. “It is. It’s good. It’s really good. I mean it’s really, really --”

“Doc.”

“Yeah. All I need to know is if you’re serious. I can’t -- I mean this can’t just be a fun little fling for me, it really can’t. But if you’re serious about this, about -- “ Their breath catches for just a moment. “About me. Then we can work the rest of it out later.” 

Rose is grinning too, now, and for a moment it’s all they can do. Then Doc gathers what’s left of their breath and says, “So?”   


“So?”

“Are you serious about this?”

Rose leans forward and all Doc can do is sit there, mind somehow simultaneous reeling and blank as she presses a single soft kiss to their lips. “As a heart attack,” she says, mouth still so close to theirs that they can feel her breath on their face. “As two heart attacks. 

Taking her face in their hands, Doc kisses her again, on the lips, on her eyelids, on her cheeks, on her chin, at the corner of her jaw, and then moves back to look at her. She looks happy.  _ Happy _ , Doc thinks, pulling her close and burying their face in the crook of her neck. “I thought I was imagining it,” they say, voice muffled.

“What’s that?”   


They move back just far enough that they can speak audibly, but they don’t want to get very far from her. Not that they could very easily, given that the two of them are pretty tangled together at this point, leaning together against the couch. “I thought I was imagining it,” they say again. “I didn’t think you could possibly -- I don’t know. You’re right, it is scary for me. But it’s a lot less scary now than it was five minutes ago.”

Rose holds them, holds their head against her shoulder, presses a kiss to the top of their head. “I thought you just didn’t want to talk about it.”

Doc scoots their head a little to kiss the side of Rose’s neck, and she makes a pleased little sound. “I definitely want to talk about it. But I think right now I just want to be here. With you.”   


“Yeah. That sounds pretty good.”

“Is your day getting better?”

Rose laughs -- a big, bright laugh that Doc can feel in their whole body, pressed as it is against hers. “Yeah,” she says. “Suppose it is.”

Doc thinks it’s probably a bit early to say what they want to say, which is that they want to make all her days better, forever and ever until they both breathe their last, which will hopefully be a long time from now and both at the very same moment. Much to early for that. They just kiss her throat again and then reach up to tilt her head down and kiss her mouth and try to put all the adoration they feel into that instead of into words. They kiss her to say,  _ Rose Tyler, I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you.  _ She kisses them back and it seems possible that she’s saying the exact same thing. It’s alright by them that it’s not out loud. Here, on the floor of their tiny apartment, wrapped up in Rose’s arms, Doc thinks they would probably be content to wait until the end of the universe to hear those words. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Kai for proofreading! I'm leaving this as a one-shot even though I plan to noodle around some more in this au because I have TOO many wips, and the rest of the stuff I want to do will likely be a set of non-chronological little stories that pretty much stand on their own as long as you know the premise. 
> 
> Thanks for reading :)


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